Coronavirus

Governor DeSantis (pronounced "death sentence") of Florida dropped out of sight for a couple of weeks. Now he is back, and appears to have breathing problems. He also has a credibility problem.

Just got one 15 year old son the booster. The other one can't get it for another week.

Had an appointment at Wal-Mart for the shot... they were UNAWARE that 12-15 year old kids could now get the booster. I was mentally preparing for being turned away while they "checked".

My daughter’s hospital has canceled surgeries, which freed up the OR nurses for other work. They’ve been directed to take tasks off of the regular floor nurses in order to help them cover more patients simultaneously.

One of them is renowned for their ability to harvest veins for coronary bypass surgery. He was tasked with answering the phones on one of the floors, and didn’t know how to do it. They had to train him how to answer a phone properly! Kids these days.

My daughter will likely be on similar duty soon.

The Red Cross has declared its first-ever national blood shortage.

www.redcrossblood.org/donate-blood/dlp/r...shortage-crisis.html

Please consider donating.

I donate as often as I can, but fortunately I'm eligible again this month.

If you have the time, I also recommend donating platelets instead of whole blood. It takes longer (~45 minutes vs. 15), but it lasts longer and helps more people.

I'm going into work today and giving in person class. It's kind of incredible and surreal how many people are pretty obviously (minorly) sick and we're just going fuck it, let's have class in person.

My current written instructions are to continue teaching regardless of exposure until I get an explicit positive test.

Gary Sax wrote: My current written instructions are to continue teaching regardless of exposure until I get an explicit positive test.

That’s some bullshit.

Starting March 1st my company won't allow anyone into the office without proof of Booster. Still required to social distance and wear masks away from desk.

My company requires us to be vaccinated and boosted by 2/10. Not that many of us go to the office any longer, but those that do have to have a negative test beforehand, wear N95/KN95/KF94 (only) masks all day (except to eat). If we don’t have masks or tests then they will give them to us. If we feel sick, don’t go in.

I'm still here living in the land of no COVID, but there are cracks starting to show in the surface. Omni is starting to pop up and places move in and out of various types of lockdowns. We had a local staff member who lives near the airport locked in her house for two weeks and I remember a scare last May that had us going to test every Sunday and severely limited ability to do anything but go to work. Whenever we use leave and do anything but sit in our apartment we risk getting caught up in a government lockdown and burning all our leave being forced to pay to stay in a sub-standard quarantine hotel. We've had coworkers who travelled and hotels told them to get lost when they walk up to the counter cancelling their reservations, people told to lock down upon return to their home, people stuck in cities they visit, etc. As a result I literally haven't left this metropolitan area for 13 months. This is by far the longest time in my life I have never left one city.

I was planning on using my official R&R ticket to get home in early Feb since we are covered on official R&R if something happens (you get Weather and Safety Leave for the quarantines and the quarantine hotels are paid for on a R&R ticket), Wanted to go home, do maintenance and upgrades on my house, clear some land for planting nut trees later, and have some marathon sessions of the new Descent with my boys. Problem is flights back are getting cancelled left and right. If a flight comes in and more than five passengers test positive they cancel that leg for a few weeks. My return flight has already been cancelled and pushed twice. We can still get out easily at the moment since the planes are running empty when they return but still taking passengers out.

We aren't really concerned about getting COVID (we are all vaxxed and boosted as much as possible), we are really concerned about treatment by the Chinese government. It seems our incoming diplomats are getting COVID at the airport in the process of getting here. Just this week a family came in and the two year old tested positive. They brought in a medievac in record time to prevent them from having to stay in a Chinese fever hospital indefinitely. While the fever hospitals in my city are just fine if spartan the conditions in Shanghai are unacceptable (they don't have private rooms there due to overcapacity). I'm not sure the Department will medievac anyone in that situation, I think they are just doing this because there is a two year old involved. Meanwhile I had to work until 1030 PM Thursday and we went to KFC to grab something to eat. We took the only empty seat which happened to be next to one of the self ordering kiosks (not really, but close enough). A young boy runs in with his mother and starts using the machine next to me. Then his mom catches up and tells him to go to the other machine. Walking down the street we get people who aren't wearing masks who put them on when they start to approach to pass us. Just constant low level xenophobia bullshit day-in day-out. To be expected when the local propaganda networks tell everyone all their problems are due to foreigners. It's a country where the Fox News equivalent is the only network.

Personally I feel Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo seriously damaged the Department and COVID just finished it off and I don't believe we have the will or leadership to do right by our people anymore. The new SECSTATE is just there. I honestly couldn't tell you a thing about the guy or his policies or priorities. He might as well be a suit stuffed with straw. I'm just so burned out by being trapped in this gilded cage. Thankfully I only have six more years to retirement and we are allowed to do six years in HQ before being forced back overseas. COVID has made me seriously re-assess how I want my future to play out and that is for stability for me and my family. I honestly wouldn't recommend this job and lifestyle to any young individual anymore.

Last summer, I got a notice about jury duty at the federal district court in Minneapolis. I completed the form, complained that this would be my third time serving jury duty, then waited and worried for weeks. I never heard anything, so I assumed that I got lucky. Today, I got the notice again, and the exemption for prior jury duty only applies if I actually served on a jury within the last two years. Maybe they weren't doing jury trials for an extended time due to pandemic.

Anyway, the notice mentions that we will be required to wear masks inside the courthouse, which makes sense. But I don't think that I personally have worn a mask for more than about 90 minutes at a time during this whole pandemic. Oh well, maybe they won't be able to tell if I have nodded off if my glasses are fogged up.

The obnoxious part is that there isn't a set week like when I have served country jury duty in the past. Instead, I have been warned that I will be call for the months of March and April this year. I can visualize needing to work some nights and weekends at work to stay caught up.

My daughter has been sick for a week and we are waiting for the PCR test results.



Update: the results came in the day I posted this but she didn't see them. She tested negative. My brother has it and wakes up with his eyes glued shut. He said he feels like he has been hanging upside down for 30 minutes. This was a few days ago. He was vaccinated and boosted, and is not morbidly obese or anything.

District Court works differently from Circuit Court.

The biggest issue we have is that On-Call part. "You need to call each day after 5pm to determine if we need you or not" is just bullshit for anyone that has daycare needs or work schedules that they can't get out of. I can't tell my employer that hey, sure the system upgrade is happening tomorrow, unless the courts call and I need to cancel with everyone.

Then they do this year after year, so that everyone in the office is unavailable (maybe, maybe not) for one week a year. I kind of bitched about this this last time, because they were seating a jury for a mass shooting and it could have taken me out for weeks.

I'd like to know who else in the county is serving jury duty if I'm getting called once a year with about 200 other people. That means the pool is 10,000 people in a county with 450,000.